We’ve now been living on VI for about 10 months and this will be our first winter here. We started 2020 with a great trip to Butchart Gardens to see the Christmas Lights (although after Christmas). They do a theme every year and this year was ‘The 12 days of Christmas’.
In Feb Rachel and Francis came for a visit and we went skiing in Whistler for a few days. A bucket list item for any avid ski enthusiast.
In March 2020 the COVID pandemic shut down the world. Our organized activities stopped, and our barely off the ground business slowed to a crawl with nobody travelling. We were ever so grateful to live in a place where we could continue to hike and go to the beach every day.
Some local hikes
A walk along the beach at Rathtrevor 
Rathtrevor beach bunnies – they are everywhere 
A treehorse? 
Chutes along the Millstone river in Bowen Park 
Maggie and Chris 
Nice to have this greenspace in the middle of Nanaimo 
Time capture of the chutes 
Natural bird feeders made by school kids 
First there was one, then…… 
Used to human’s feeding them
June arrived and some ‘restricted to your area’ activities were allowed to resume; with less campers able to visit we took the opportunity to do four trips and explored the island from North to South.
In October, I had a silly fall and mangled 2 fingers on my right hand which thankfully did not require surgery, and luckily I am a lefty. Having to travel to Campbell River for medical appt’s gave us excuse to do more camping while in the area.
We were able to have a Thanksgiving with family so Nik and Mike came for a visit.
We managed to sneak in a quick 2 days of camping in November and went to Quinsam Campground near Campbell River after a rehab appt. at the hospital there. It was nice to be away for a couple days and do some easy hikes (no scrambles while healing broken bones). The Elk River hike goes partly through a BC Hydro plant where they put up a display of totems and some info. placards. From there the trail climbs high above a gorge and then either direction along the Elk river.
TaiChi resumed for informal outdoor sessions and because we had continued learning the movements on our own through the instructors You-Tube video channel we were confident enough to join them and found it to be really enjoyable in the park.
Sadly, our Christmas plans for our girls to join us in BC were cancelled, but happily we were boarding a beautiful golden retriever for 10 days. This provided much needed distraction and daily hikes. Christmas Eve we went to Rathtrevor beach to watch the sunrise.
